The 8 Traits of Great Content: A Guide for Business Owners and Content Creators
Mastering the Art of Creating Content That Drives Traffic, Engagement, and Conversions
At Grow Faster Marketing, we definitely agree that the phrase “content is king” has become a bit of a tired cliché in the world of digital marketing. It’s easy to dismiss the importance of content creation when it’s been drilled into our heads so often. However, we firmly believe that great content is still a critical component of any successful digital marketing strategy.
So, what does it mean to create great content? Essentially, it comes down to providing valuable information to your audience in a way that engages and educates them. This can take many forms – blog posts, videos, infographics, social media updates, and more. The key is to ensure that your content serves a purpose and helps you achieve your business goals, whether that’s increasing brand awareness, generating leads, or driving sales.
To help you create content that hits the mark, we recommend focusing on 8 key traits that we believe all great content should embody. These traits all end in “able” and include things like being shareable, relatable, and actionable. If your content meets most or all of these standards, you’re on the right track to creating content that resonates with your target audience and helps you achieve your business objectives.
1) Great Content Is Discoverable
At Grow Faster Marketing, we know that creating great content is only half the battle. Your content also needs to be discoverable in order to be effective. In fact, even the best-written content won’t be worth much if nobody knows it exists. That’s why we believe that SEO is an essential component of any digital marketing strategy, especially for small businesses.
To ensure that your content is easily findable, there are 2 key ways to approach it: from within your site and from outside your site.
- Internally, your content should be well-organized and easy to navigate. This means having a clear information architecture, breadcrumbs, and a left navigation menu to guide visitors through your content hierarchy. You should also include a search function on your site to help visitors find what they’re looking for quickly.
- Externally, your content should be optimized for search engines so that it appears prominently in search results. This means choosing highly relevant keywords and optimizing your content for those keywords. If you need help with this process, our team at Grow Faster Marketing can provide you with expert guidance.
In addition to optimizing your content for search, you should also promote it actively to your target audience. This means featuring new content prominently on your homepage, sharing it on social media, and sending out email blasts to your subscribers. By promoting your content effectively, you can maximize its reach and ensure that it reaches the widest possible audience.
Finally, consider including a “best of” sidebar on your site to showcase your most popular content. This can help keep visitors engaged with your site for longer and encourage them to explore more of your content. By implementing these strategies, you can ensure that your great content is not only well-written, but also easily discoverable by your target audience.
2) Crafting Shareable Content: Strategies and Tips
In the digital age, creating content that people want to share is key to success. The ability to produce material that not only captures people’s attention but also motivates them to share it with their networks can significantly increase your reach and engagement. So, what makes content shareable? It’s a 2-part process.
Create content that people want to share
Firstly, you need to create content that people want to share. It has to be remarkable enough to make people want to share it on social media, email, or other platforms. Secondly, you need to make it easy for people to share. This can be achieved by adding social media buttons, “Click to Tweet” links, and other user-friendly sharing tools.
Upworthy, a renowned viral content website, has mastered the art of shareable content. Their key strategies include:
Starting with truly remarkable content that you would want to share yourself. Spending more time on the “framing” process, which includes the headline, lead image, and share text. Make sure your content is intriguing enough to grab people’s attention and encourage them to read and share it.
Make it easy for them to share
Incorporating user-friendly social sharing tools such as hovering share buttons, “Click to Tweet” links, and pop-ups to make it easy for people to share.
Make sure you prioritize shareability in your content creation strategy, and remember that the easier you make it for people to share your content, the more likely they are to do so.
3) Great Content Is Usable
Great content is not only well-designed and shareable, but it is also usable. Usability is crucial in design, whether it’s for an online tool or a physical product like a fork. When it comes to content, usability refers to how easy it is for people to consume your information.
Starting with a well-designed, highly usable website will make any content you add more usable. However, it’s also important to think about the usability of each individual piece of content, especially if it’s an interactive tool or app. User testing and feedback should be taken seriously to ensure that these tools work seamlessly across multiple browsers and environments.
If your content requires some kind of action, such as sharing, providing an email address, making a purchase, or donating money, conversion rate optimization is critical. This involves optimizing your content to maximize the likelihood that visitors will take the desired action.
Even for regular old articles, usability is still important. Consider how the article is presented and make sure it’s easy to read and navigate. Additionally, ensure that your site is mobile-friendly and has fast loading speeds to enhance the usability of your content.
4) Great Content Is Readable
Readability is crucial for content, as it ensures that readers can easily consume and comprehend the information. It involves both good writing and design practices.
When it comes to design, readable content should be easy on the eyes. Therefore, it’s important to consider factors such as:
- Font size (make sure it’s not too small)
- Text and background color (avoid hard-to-read combinations)
- Column width (keep it at a reasonable width to prevent readers from losing their place)
- Leading (the space between lines should not be too tight)
In terms of writing, writing for the web is a specialized skill. Here are some tips to make your content more readable:
- Lists are popular for a reason. They make the content easy to process, so consider using them as a structure for your article, as well as within the article itself.
- Scannable chunks are important. Break up your text into smaller chunks using headings, subheadings, bullet lists, and bold text. This makes it easier for readers to scan and find what they are looking for.
- Clarity and concision are essential. Try to convey valuable information in every sentence while avoiding rambling. Also, aim for clarity by writing in a conversational tone that you’d feel comfortable saying out loud.
5) The Best Content Is Quotable
Memorable and shareable content is often quotable. However, writing quotable content requires a certain skill set that goes beyond just writing well. Here are some tips to help you create more quotable content:
Read more – Exposure to great writing is a fantastic way to develop your own writing style. Try to read from different genres and mediums, including blogs and websites, in addition to books and print magazines.
Work on being short and sweet – Short, concise sentences are easier to remember and share. If you find that your sentences are too long, try to break them down into shorter phrases.
Be funny, wise, or poignant – People are more likely to quote lines that make them laugh, think, or feel. Use humor, wit, wisdom, or emotion to create content that resonates with your audience.
Highlight your best lines – If you know you’ve written something particularly noteworthy, put it in bold or use a pull quote to make sure it stands out.
Avoid cliches – Overused phrases and marketing jargon are unlikely to be remembered or quoted. Try to use unique language and ideas to make your content stand out.
6) Memorable Content Makes Great Content
The key to making your content memorable is to ensure that it provides value to your audience and answers the “So what?” question. In other words, your content should be meaningful and useful to your readers in some way. In other words, why should your audience care about what you’re saying? What’s in it for them? For example, a blog post about the benefits of meditation could answer the “So what?” question by explaining how meditation can help reduce stress, improve focus, and increase overall well-being.
Additionally, creating contrarian content that challenges the status quo can also help make your content more memorable, as it can create a strong emotional reaction in readers and make them more likely to remember your message. Instead of simply rehashing what everyone else is saying, take a contrarian stance and offer a fresh take on the subject. For example, a blog post about the benefits of a vegetarian diet could take a contrarian stance by exploring the potential drawbacks of a meat-based diet and highlighting the environmental impact of animal agriculture.
Ultimately, the goal is to create content that is unique, engaging, and valuable, so that readers are more likely to remember it and share it with others.
7) Great Content Provides Actionable Advice
Creating content is a great way for businesses to establish themselves as experts in their field. By providing helpful advice, you can gain the trust of your audience and increase the likelihood that they will return to your site and consider your products or services.
When it comes to informational content, the most effective type is actionable content. This means providing specific, practical advice that readers can implement right away. It’s not enough to offer vague suggestions or general tips; you need to give people something they can act on.
Here is an example of actionable content:
Testing Landing Page Headlines: Writing effective headlines for landing pages is critical for converting visitors into customers. This post from Unbounce offers five specific headline formulas that readers can test right away, along with plenty of examples to help them get started. The title of the post emphasizes how actionable the advice is, making it clear that readers will come away with practical insights they can use immediately.
8) Great Content Is Measurable
One of the main reasons for creating content is to achieve business goals, but you can’t know if your content is working unless you make it measurable. Every time you create a piece of content, set specific goals and track relevant metrics to see how well it’s performing.
Some common goals for content marketing include:
- Generating more traffic to your website
- Increasing engagement with your audience
- Driving more leads and sales
Here are some examples of how you can measure the effectiveness of your content for each of these goals:
- Traffic: Use tools like Google Analytics or SEMrush to track the number of visits, unique visitors, and pageviews that your content generates. You can also analyze the sources of traffic, such as organic search, social media, email, or referral.
- Engagement: Look at metrics such as social shares, comments, time on page, or bounce rate to gauge how well your content resonates with your audience. You can also use surveys or polls to get direct feedback from your readers.
- Conversions: Use conversion tracking tools like Google Analytics or HubSpot to track the number of leads, signups, downloads, or purchases that your content generates. You can also set up specific goals or events to track the conversion path of your visitors.
By measuring the performance of your content, you can learn what works and what doesn’t, and improve your content strategy over time. For instance, if you notice that your blog posts with visual aids or video tutorials tend to generate more traffic and leads than your plain text posts, you can create more of those. Or if you find that your infographics or case studies get more social shares and backlinks than your listicles or how-to guides, you can focus on those formats.
Conclusion
In short, great content is not only creative, relevant, valuable, memorable, actionable, and shareable, but also measurable. By setting clear goals, tracking relevant metrics, and analyzing the results, you can create content that not only entertains or educates your audience, but also delivers tangible business results.
In conclusion, creating great content is not an easy task, but it’s an essential part of any successful content marketing strategy. By focusing on these 8 key traits, you can ensure that your content will stand out from the crowd and achieve your business goals.
If you’re struggling to create great content for your business, don’t worry – you don’t have to do it alone. Our team of experienced content creators can help you craft content that meets all the criteria we’ve discussed in this guide. From conducting research to crafting compelling headlines and calls to action, we can assist you every step of the way. Contact us today to learn more and start creating great content in a super cost-effective way that drives results for your business.